Category: Family
-
I do not own a gun
My two older sisters had matching dolls. I had cars and trucks, a Roy Rogers’ holster with a silver cap gun. I used to hide in their closet and played with their dolls when no one was around. My mother was a girl scout leader; I know all the songs. I belonged to the boy…
-
Pressure
Two kinds of pressure Within and without Both will kill you If you don’t watch out One will make it rise The other make it seethe You can change the outcome Just relax and breathe Push your ass from the table Do not lick the pan Take a baby aspirin And your Losartan 5-9-23 from…
-
Sip the morning dry
Like a ship coming to harbor, bullfrog calls out from weeds, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Before heat chases dawn away, I watch day shadows shorten, ask the Creator to refine my character, inhale the last fragrance of warm tea from the bottom of my cup and sip the morning dry.
-
Greening clover
Today is the anniversary of my birth; a day when I was innocent and my parents were not yet disappointed. I put on old shoes and a rain suit, grab the umbrella from its place on the porch and walk in the park. Beside the pond I recite the name of God and ask for…
-
Translation
05/20 – sometimes I scan magazines articles to see if I want to dig deeper and they feel like poems – this is a poem I call Scan and Pick poem (in the order words occurred) from a New Yorker article this morning: multilingual childhood between languages find myself untrammelled lyrical linguists Ay-Speak unabridged original…
-
For Barb and Kathy
on an old green swingset, new to us, we launched ourselves so high in the sky It threatened to tip us backward in the grass we would fling ourselves towards the sun competing who could fly the furthest I used to win a lot maybe, it was because I did not fear the landing or…
-
Translation
05/20 – sometimes I scan magazines articles to see if I want to dig deeper and they feel like poems – this is a poem I call Scan and Pick poem (in the order words occurred) from a New Yorker article this morning: =================================================== multilingual childhood between languages find myself untrammelled lyrical linguists Ay-Speak unabridged…
-
Waking in a strange house
Above my head blue jay searches in roof gutter finds just the right piece and flies away. A deer samples leaves in the underbrush. Distant motorcycle accelerates, shifts gears and is gone. Family wakes on the other side of the door,; soon, I will go inside to sit on the couch until it is time…
-
The end is the beginning, is the middle, is the end
My father was always concerned with the now, with what I’m doing with today with not wasting time in pursuit of frivolous things. When my first book of poetry came out, he told me on the phone that he read my book and he didn’t think much of it. At the end he spoke of…